Group items tagged

Grades, conversely, discourage learning, as students either feel like failures upon receiving low marks or have a falsely-inflated sense of accomplishment based on high marks, which are almost always subjective.

SE2R — Summarize, Explain, Redirect and Resubmit

Since disdaining grades in favor of narrative feedback, I spend much more time doing what my colleagues call grading. I evaluate and re-evaluate student work daily. Project feedback is ongoing. I have 120 students so I’m writing seemingly all of the time. I’m often asked by teachers and friends, “Isn’t it a lot of work?”  Definitely. Would I ever return to traditional grading? Never.

Envision Education www.envisionschools.org Envision Education was founded in 2002 on this simple idea. We believe the current achievement gap reflects a systemic failure to understand how kids learn, what motivates them to learn, and what they need in order to learn well. We employ the best practices of high school design —rigorous college-preparatory curricula, small and personalized learning environments, and a focus on measurable results—and add a truly innovative model that emphasizes project-based learning, development of Deeper Learning skills, integration of arts and technology into core subjects, real-world experience in workplaces, and a uniquely rigorous assessment system. Each Envision Education school employs specific learning tactics built upon the four key R’s: Rigor, Relevance, Relationships, and Results. Vibrant learning communities apply compassion and high expectations to inspire and empower students. Our approach is specifically designed to increase student engagement, deepen integration and understanding, promote active learning, and ensure college success. We hold all our students to rigorous academic standards while providing the necessary supports—academic, emotional, and behavioral—so they can achieve success in college and life. Scope: United States

The current structure of the school day is obsolete, most would agree. Created during the Industrial Age, the assembly line system we have in place now has little relevance to what we know kids actually need to thrive

Yet therein lies the paradox. It’s exactly during these uncertain times when people must be willing to try new things, to be more open, curious and experimental, she said. In education, although there are great new models of learning and schooling, they are the exceptions, and the progressive movement has not gained much momentum.

“One thing we know for sure is that kids learn better when teachers are invested and paying attention and showing they care,” she said. “The biggest impact you’ll have as a teachers is the relationship you establish with your student.”

1. How Listening and Sharing Works

In school, getting people to share can be difficult. Learners may be diffident, or they may not have good strategies for sharing. Children often do not know how to offer constructive criticism or build on an idea. It can be helpful to give templates for sharing, such as two likes and a wish, where the “wish” is a constructive criticism or a building idea.

But more often than not, it is because one or more of five ingredients is missing: joint attention, listening, sharing, coordinating, and perspective taking.

Marshmallow Design Challenge Posted on September 28th, 2011 by mxl In this lesson, K-12 student teams have a limited period of time (18 minutes) to build the tallest free-standing spaghetti structure that can support a marshmallow. They learn how engineers collaborate to design, test, and improve on their ideas, as well as examine hidden assumptions that can derail the creative process and final product. Read More

Lesson: Design From Nature Posted on September 25th, 2011 by mxl In this lesson, students in grades 6-8 discover how engineers can use biomimicry to enhance their designs. They learn how careful observation of nature — in this case, reverse engineering a flower — can lead to new innovations and products. Read More

Lesson: Concrete for Kids Posted on September 6th, 2011 by mxl Concrete for Kids is a fun, hands-on activity to introduce students to engineering and concrete as an engineered material that engineers use to make the structures we use every day, including bridges, buildings, and roads. In this two-period lesson, teams of students in grades K-12 mix and pour concrete to form beams which, once hardened, are tested to see how much weight they can hold before breaking. Read More

adaptive learning will adjust every question based on a student’s previous answer.

Knewton is working on having educational content tagged so it can be placed into a “Knowledge Graph.” This system determines what concepts need to be learned before a student can move on to others, and how they all fit together.

The company recently parterned with Pearson to tag every textbook under their imprint work with the Knewton Knowledge Graph.

Trainers and facilitators need to remember these numbers: 90, 20, 8, 6. 90 minutes is the ideal chunk of time for participants can learn and understand 20 minutes is how long participants can listen and retain information 8 minutes is the length of time you can talk for before before they stop listening. We are trained to focus for just eight minutes due to decades of TV watching, where ad breaks occur approximately every eight to ten minutes. 6 is the ideal number of times to present information to make sure a learner remembers the content.

the challenge for facilitators is to keep things changing so that learners’ RAS keep firing so they stay alert to the learning

short attention span